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The Product Owner is like an architect. The Product Owner must know something about everything. The Product Owner is a generalist, not a specialist. To succeed, a Product Owner coordinates a cadre of professionals including engineers, designers, developers, testers, regulators, auditors, and other specialists from many disciplines. The interests of some of team members will likely conflict with the interests of others. This conflict is expected. The Product Owner must be able to assimilate information from each discipline to determine the best decisions that honor the needs of the stakeholders and maintain the integrity of the overall product.

About the Author

Jim York works with real teams doing real work. He coaches, teaches, writes, and speaks on Lean and Agile principles and practices. He has been the keynote and speaker at various Agile conferences and has held an number of leadership roles in the Agile community including the Scrum Alliance and the Agile Alliance. Jim is both a Certified Enterprise Coach℠ and a Certified Scrum Trainer®, one of only a handful of people world-wide to hold both of these top-level guide certifications from the Scrum Alliance. He has coached several organizations through their adoption of Agile including NPR, McKinsey & Company IT, GE Healthcare, and Capital One.